Listen the magician talk through his secrets

5/23/2008 – Going out for a win with the
black pieces is a hard task for amateur players like most of us but for top
players it is not really better - as long as they play opponents of their own
level of course. On his latest DVD Alexei Shirov illustrates in another 13 of
his masterpieces what must all be considered in order to achieve one's end
here.
Buy it now or read more.

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'My Best Games With Black'
by Alexei Shirov

Review by Sean Marsh

'If you want to win with Black, you must decide which is
the best strategy to achieve your aim. Should you take risks and go for the win
right from move one, or should you patiently set about achieving equality and
then wait for mistakes by White? Which opening should you choose and what is
the role played by opening preparation?'

How does a player win with Black against the world’s elite? It’s tricky enough
to push for victory in local club matches and tournaments, so it is intriguing
to see how a top GM goes about the task.

GM Shirov is, of course, very well known as a tactical and risky player,
unafraid of great complications over the board. So it’s natural to assume that
this new DVD will be a collection of bold attacking games with a large dose of
‘fire on board’.

The astonishing run time of six hours and forty five minutes gives GM Shirov
plenty of time to delve into the deeper points of his selected games.

GM Shirov’s only fault as a presenter is that he doesn’t look into the camera
often enough, preferring instead to look at his own computer screen. That,
however, is only a minor matter.
The choice of opening must surely be a factor in success with the Black pieces.

Two other key factors are revealed: sometimes it is possible to prepare a
strong surprise or novelty in a particular opening which can tilt the edge to
Black and occasionally a player can some other subconscious belief in impending
victory against a particular opponent.
Winning the Black side of King’s Gambit might not be too tricky for a top
player, but who does one set about playing for the full point with a Petroff or
a Four Knights?

Analysing his game against Sutovsky from a 2007 team event, GM Shirov
explains at the start that it’s more difficult to prepare in depth when the
name of the opponent is not known until quite late on. Add that to a sleepless
night and a bit of tension and animosity towards a particular player and the
task is complicated further. Feeling out of sorts, he chose the Petroff not to
try and win as Black, but merely ‘to survive’.

He admits to being very lucky during the game, especially in this position:

White’s 11 h3 improved an early game in which
Black drew easily. Now 11.…0-0-0 looks tempting but Grandmaster
intuition warned him off. Later he discovered that 12 Bb5 c6 13 Ba6 bxa6 14 Qe2 wins for White, even though in his
troubled and tired state at the board he had not seen the variation.

He then navigated his way
through a couple of uncomfortable moments before his opponent ran out of decent
attacking tries and offered the draw. Shirov’s hand was in the process of
extending itself in agreement when he suddenly changed his mind and opted to
play on! He managed to win some time later, sealing an almost accidental
victory.

He played into a Four
Knight’s Opening against Najer as he wasn’t convinced by his opponent’s
handling of certain variations. Nuances play an important part in a top
player’s choice of opening; after 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3
he played 2...Nf6, knowing that in this case 3 Nc3 would follow and that 2...Nc6 would have been met by 3 Bb5.

Naturally, he brings typical
‘Planet Shirov’ chaos to the board in the majority of his games on this DVD and
unusual positions abound, as these randomly selected samples amply demonstrate:

Akopian - Shirov

Shabalov - Shirov

Fedorov - Shirov

They look like
positions from Hugh Courtney’s famous Chess Magazine Christmas Quizzes.

A great advantage of this format over chess books is that the presenter/author
cannot just print lengthy variations and expect the viewer/reader to spend
hours working over them; everything has to be explained in full view; the
magician is obliged to talk through his secrets!

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!

Enjoy the best moments of recent top tournaments (World Cup, Isle of Man Open) with analysis of top players. In addition you'll get lots of training material. For example 10 new suggestions for your opening repertoire.